Heaps Decent is an Australian based dynamic arts organisation working with young people & emerging artists from marginalised & disadvantaged communities, providing a means by which they can tell their story in their own way. Heaps Decent supports change, positive futures & the development of high quality Australian music with a unique identity.

Heaps Decent facilitators run week-long music and multimedia arts workshops in the small north-west NSW towns of Wilcannia, Bourke, Brewarrina, Walgett and Dubbo on a regular basis. There we work with with many Indigenous young people in their local communities.

Heaps Decent has been running projects at Lomandra School in Campbelltown since 2010. Last year we increased activity with weekly visits and we will continue this work throughout 2016. The young people at Lomandra focus not only on music workshops, but a variety of digital art mediums as well to run in tandem for the project.

Home Base is our weekly workshop at Redfern Community Centre. The workshop is run as a drop-in format with young people able to come and record with one of our facilitators in the quality studio. A high standard of production is maintained, targeting skills ranging from lyric writing and beat making to professional conduct. With performance outcomes as one of the focuses of the project, some of the young people have performed at Fuzzy’s Curve Ball and Parklife festivals and at the Australian Parliament House!

This project sees Heaps Decent carry out music production workshops in Juvenile Justice centres in Lidcombe, Wagga Wagga, Campbelltown and St Mary’s and currently expanding to cover most of the centres in NSW. This program seeks to provide the young people within these centres with a voice, motivation and heightened self-esteem by engaging with their experiences through music.

Heaps Decent runs a weekly workshop with the young people of Key College in Redfern, a private College run by Youth Off The Streets that provides education for young people without stable housing. Heaps Decent have been leading weekly music workshops at Key College since 2008 with great success!

Riverina and Wagga Sessions is an ongoing workshop project in the Riverina hub of Wagga Wagga in NSW and greater Riverina area. The project consists of monthly workshop visits at various centres around the Riverina region with numerous community partners.

A Shopfront Contemporary Arts and Performance project in partnership with diverse organsiations such as West Darling Arts (Broken Hill, NSW) and the Hazelhurst Gallery (Gymea, NSW) At The Drive In was an exciting interactive media installation, performance and touring festival culminating in performances at an abandoned Drive-in in Broken Hill.

Detours & Destinations was a joint project between Heaps Decent, Shopfront: Contemporary Arts and Performance and the Department of Juvenile Justice with the Sydney Opera House. D&D was an integrated multi-media arts project framing the stories and experience of young people from Lomandra School in Campbelltown, Miimali Aboriginal Community Association in Blacktown and Fairfield Intensive English Centre.